SUNNYVALE -- A team of elder Silicon Valley scientists is building an audacious device that might solve one of humanity's most profound dilemmas -- a "cloud whitener" designed to cool a warming planet.

The men -- retired physicists, engineers, chemists and computer experts from some of Silicon Valley's top tech companies -- have been meeting four days a week for seven years in the Sunnyvale lab of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project to design a tool that creates perfectly suspended droplets of water resembling fog.

Their goal is to launch the nation's first open-air field trial of controversial "geoengineering" at a still-unidentified site in Moss Landing. There, they would test the ability of an energy-efficient machine to hurl tiny seawater droplets into a graceful trajectory -- the first step of a research project to boost the brightness of clouds to reflect rays of sunlight back into space.
Aqua Metrology Systems’ Armand Neukermans, 73, poses for a portrait behind a cloud condensation nuclei spraying system prototype at Aqua Metrology
Aqua Metrology Systems' Armand Neukermans, 73, poses for a portrait behind a cloud condensation nuclei spraying system prototype at Aqua Metrology Systems in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Wednesday, June 24, 2015. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group) ( LiPo Ching )

"We are interested in an insurance policy for global warming," said Jack Foster, 79, a physicist and laser pioneer. "We are not interested in deploying it unless it's necessary. But we'd like to have something available, so we know what works and what doesn't work."

The effort to conduct even a small-scale test -- overseen by the University of Washington, which has numerous experts in atmospheric science -- represents a dramatic shift in thinking in the scientific community, which until recently resisted conversations about deliberate manipulation of the climate.

The reason for the change: There is scientific consensus that even if the world succeeds in shifting away from fossil fuels, warming of the planet is inevitable -- and it may have catastrophic consequences.
Advertisement

Critics of geoengineering, however, warn against altering nature's patterns, arguing that we don't yet understand all the potential ramifications. And they worry that if people see a quick fix for climate change, they may not try as hard to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Personally, I doubt that the world is ready for this," said Stephen Gardiner, a University of Washington philosophy professor who studies the ethics of environmental policies. "Geoengineering raises huge ethical and political questions, nationally and internationally."